Summer Reads 2010 - About Simmone Howell

Author Biography
Simmone Howell grew up in Melbourne, Australia. She spent her teen years writing love odes to eighties pop stars and English essays for her friends. Her novel Notes from the Teenage Underground was awarded the 2007 Victorian Premier's Prize for Young Adult Fiction. Her second novel Everything Beautiful was shortlisted for the Melbourne Prize for Best Writing. Simmone lives in a crumbling cottage in country Victoria with her husband, son and an ever-growing pile of records, books and ex-rental videos.



Synopsis
‘I decided I would only pack frivolous things: eyelash curlers and costume jewellery and little jars of antipasto. If I had to go to Christian camp then I would go as a plague.’
Riley Rose, atheist and all-round revel, has been tricked by her father and his irritating new girlfriend into spending her summer at Spirit Ranch Holiday Camp.
There Riley meets Dylan Luck, recent paraplegic and fellow misfit-on-a-mission, and together they turn the camp upside down. Truths are told, secrets revealed and Riley’s dreaded week away turns out to have life-changing significance…

Selected Quotes:
“Outrageous, shocking and very, very funny.”
Irish Examiner

“It has all the ingredients you need in such a good book.  It’s heartbreaking and funny, vulgar (with the best example of inappropriate, but not too damaging sex I’ve read in a long time) and a really wonderful central character you really care about.”
Books for Keeps

“Everything a book should be.  It’s good.  Very good.”
Bookwitch

“The story is packed with sharp, sassy humour, with sprinklings of contemporary – and often surprisingly lyrical – descriptions and metaphors.”
Mslexia

Other books by Simmone Howell:
•   Notes From the Teenage Underground

Simmone's websites:
www.simmonehowell.com
www.teenageunderground.com  
www.postteentrauma.blogspot.com